Calvin Bailey How Stephen Lawrence's murder shaped one ex-military candidate

More than 30 years on, the horrific killing of Stephen Lawrence still haunts one of Keir Starmer's new candidates with military experience.

- Aletha Adu

Calvin Bailey MBE was 15 at the time. He had developed a close friendship with Stephen's brother, Stuart, after his family moved from Zambia to south London when he was a young child.

"When people look at me they often say: 'Where is his background? Why haven't you been campaigning for years?' I've been in the military for 24 years, but that's not all the story," he said.

Bailey was speaking shortly after he stood behind Starmer in Bury as one of the party's 10 former military candidates. He is on course to win the safe Labour seat of Leyton and Wanstead, formerly held by the chair of Labour's parliamentary party, John Cryer.

In the aftermath of Lawrence's murder, Bailey joined anti-fascist marches. "I wasn't emotionally intelligent enough to deal with it," he said of the killing. "I went to a lot of the anti-fascist marches at the time... and they confused me every time, as everything was coming out with anger. I didn't know what that meant.